Bosiung ba Labohlano le fetileng ke ile ka bona ntho e 'ngoe thelevisheneng e ileng ea ntšoara ka nakoana. Hoo e ka bang metsotso e ts'eletseng kapa e supileng, ho ne ho bonahala eka likhohlano tsa lipolotiki li ne li hlahisa monate o se nang kelello - ho "Late Night With David Letterman Show," libakeng tsohle.

Ke ile ka tobane le kotlo ka phoso ka har'a papali e neng e halefile ka ntle pakeng tsa banna ba babeli ba basoeu ba alpha ba thelevishene. Ka lehlakoreng le leng ho ne ho lutse Letterman ea ntoa ea anti-Iraq. Ka lehlakoreng le leng ho ne ho lutse mosireletsi ea tummeng oa Fox News Bush le mohatelli ea thata-le letona Bill O'Reilly.

O’Reilly’s position was straight out of the White House’s mid-term talking points. Iraq, he argued, is a tough and complicated situation in a difficult and dangerous world where America is trying to do the right thing. It won’t be easy, but we need, the FOX News bully insisted, to stay the course. We must finish the job of bringing freedom and democracy to the country we liberated from Saddam, which can’t be left to the terrorists.

Ho khahlisang ke hore O'Reilly o buile ka boteng ba mehloli e mengata ea oli Iraq, a phahamisa maikutlo a nyarosang a batho ba Iraq ba etsa seo ba se lakatsang ka lisebelisoa tse tala tse tlas'a mobu oa bona.

Ho bontša khalefo ea maikutlo a sechaba nakong eo ka eona boholo ba Maamerika a seng a sa bone mosebetsi ona o lokile kapa o amana hantle le "ntoa ea bokhukhuni," khang ea O'Reilly e ne e bonahala e sa ratoe ka ho hlaka ke bamameli ba Letterman.

Empa motšoantšisi ea botsoa, ​​ea sekametseng ka bolokolohi o ne a se boemong ba ho nka monyetla o molemo. Ka nako e 'ngoe lenaneong, O'Reilly o ile a bua le bamameli ba tletseng bora ka litlolo tsa molao tsa Saddam, a ba bolella hore ba koale melomo ka mor'a ho ba hopotsa hore mohatelli oa Iraq "o bolaile batho ba hae ba 400,000."

It was a perfect opportunity to point out that many of Saddam’s crimes against Iraqis were committed with United States and Reagan administration aproval and support. It was an ideal moment to add that U.S. economic sanctions killed more than a million Iraqis and, above all, that (as recently reported in the leading British medical journal The Lancet) the current U.S. occupation has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis.

Letterman failed to mention any of these elementary facts. Again and again, Letterman blustered in O’Reilly’s face about “all the people who have died” because of Bush’s war. But each time Letterman mentioned this problem of unnecessary deaths, he referred only to the nearly 3,000 U.S. soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq.

The two-thirds of a million Iraqis liberated from earthly existence by “Operation Iraqi Freedom” were not part of the problem for the talk show host. They were not part of “all the people who have died,” reflecting a telling selectivity that speaks volumes for anyone who still wonders “Why They Hate Us.”

Letterman repeatedly failed to challenge O’Reilly’s recurrent assertion that the U.S. invaded Iraq on the basis of “bad” and “mistaken” intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). As war opponents knew from the start and has been widely exposed since, the Bush administration ordered the invasion of Iraq with the assistance of its own deliberately “cooked” intelligence. That “bad intelligence” was “fixed around the [pre-ordained] policy” (in the words of the Downing Street memo) of illegally occupying oil-rich Mesopotamia. It was made to order.

Letterman also played along with O’Reilly’s telling of the Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld-Bush regime’s leading post-WMD fairly tale. This leading bedtime story for the American masses claims that the real reason for invading Iraq was the noble desire to export freedom and democracy.

Never mind that democracy, freedom, and national independence are the last things U.S. foreign policymakers want to see in Iraq. The attainment of those things would mean that the Iraqis would be at liberty to do whatever they like with their vast and super-strategic oil reserves – to cut, for example, any petroleum deals they wish with leading economic and geopolitical competitor states and regions like Russia, China, and Western Europe.

Tokoloho e joalo ea Iraq ke nyatsi ho leano la US ka mabaka a mang a matle haholo a borena.

Ha O'Reilly a ne a sebelisa sehokelo sa khale le se nyatsehang sa White House lipakeng tsa puso ea Saddam le al Qaeda (Profinseng ea al Anbar), Letterman e ile ea theoleloa ho khutsa e ferekaneng, a se na tsebo kapa takatso ea ho phephetsa mohlomphehi oa litaba oa proto-fascist.

Letterman deserves some credit for blurting out “oh, so it’s all about the oil” early in his argument with O’Reilly. He did not – and was in no position – to pursue that rather vital point, however and his bemused and bewildered U.S. viewing herd was left as confused as ever. At the end of the “debate,” Letterman confessed that “I don’t know what I’m talking about” and he reached out pathetically to shake war propagandist O’Reilly’s hand.

Ogre ea matla O'Reilly o hlahile e le mohlōli ea bohlale, a otla Letterman ea sa tsebeng letho ka lintlha tsa bohlokoa tsa nalane, ho kenyelletsa le hore na ke hobaneng ha US e le Iraq le seo Letterman a ka ratang ho bona se etsahala moo.

Ho sa le joalo, bahlaseluoa ba 'nete ba "Ts'ebetso ea Iraqi Freedom" - batho ba Iraq - ba ile ba etsoa ba sa bonahale le ho feta ka hare ho naha ea borena, ho latela khethollo ea morabe ea ho sebelisoa ha oli ho tloha qalong.

Paul Street(paulstreet99@yahoo.com)is a writer and speaker in the American Midwest. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), and Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, and Policy in Chicago (Chicago, 2005) Street’s next book is Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (New York, 2007).